Friday, February 11, 2011

The first consideration: Make your white papers readable. The title of the paper has to be catchy. Spend several hours researching and downloading relevant white papers in your target market segment. Be sure to review top technology and media sites that post white papers. See if your media rep or a contact at the site will tell you the top ten downloads. Check out what makes them eye-catching at first glance.

Every reader who picks up your white paper will be asking, "What's in it for me?" or a similar question. If your paper doesn't answer that question successfully in the title and the first few lines, then you've lost the reader. So make sure your paper addresses how to solve a problem you know is a real pain point for your targeted reader.

The audience for the white paper is likely composed of mid- to high-level technical and/or business managers, usually pressed for time. I'd therefore recommend that you keep your white paper scaled to a readable length -- 4-6 pages maximum.

White Paper:

1. Preliminary: Paper objective. A white paper "leads the reader's mind" to a positive conclusion about solving their problem and thus, selecting your product and/or service. So put yourself in your reader's position and then ask yourself this question (which every reader is going to ask one way or another): What's in it for me?

Some of the questions that will help you produce a strong positive response in your reader are:

-- What's the end result we would like to achieve?

-- Who's the audience?

-- Why is the topic important? How does the topic connect to your product and/or service (if not immediately self-evident)?

-- How do you plan to use the paper?

-- Is there a competitive niche overlooked by other players in the industry?

-- Contact information for any appropriate outside resources for the paper such as:

-- Keyword research -- Often, the site's weblog will help help to identify keyword search terms people use to find your site

-- Customers and/or channel partners

Takeaway for #1 & #2: Every minute spent in the planning and research cycle, the stronger your white paper.

3. Interview the Key Resource people for the White Paper.

4. Detailed Outline: This crucial step dramatically simplifies writing and approval of the final draft.

-- All stakeholders must review and approve the detailed outline. The purpose of this step is to present the proposed title, the first 2-3 paragraphs, and a detailed outline of the remaining content. This step usually requires at least two iterations, occasionally three. The first draft of the outline often triggers responses such as, "Oh we forgot to include this." Other changes and corrections may include upgrading the writer's understanding of the subject matter, correct technical phrases for the field (though we usually research this extensively), and other deletions or corrections.

-- The outline establishes alignment on the project and makes final approval very easy for both the writer and the reviewers with only minor edits needed.

-- Approving the detailed outline:

It's critical for all stakeholders to actually review and approve the detailed outline. Otherwise, it's too easy to "wave a hand" and say, "Oh, it's fine," and then have a senior manager find serious issues when reviewing the draft. Fortunately, this scenario is 100% preventable by the outline review.

5. Draft:

-- We write the paper soon after the detailed outline is approved.

-- Reviewed by all relevant parties.

-- Normally, if all parties signed off on the outline, only minor tweaks are needed for the first draft.

The Result: The client team easily agrees on the final draft (as vs. multiple rewrites and endless wordsmithing).

Summary: By applying this guide to developing a white paper, you'll achieve all of your content creation objectives with a minimum of effort and time. You'll achieve a catchy title, meaty SEO optimized content, and a meaningful solution for your audience's most pressing challenges.

My goal for you is that by using this guide, whether you use me as your writer or not, is that your next white paper is the smoothest experience you've ever had.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

A well-written white paper captivates your audience in the title and the first few lines on a subject that is near and dear to your reader’s heart. The paper makes the case that your technology solves a major problem, in time and/or dollar savings or other benefit meaningful to your ideal prospect.

When completed, most companies do a few standard things with their white paper: post it on their website, send it to their prospect list, and get it to their sales team. Some companies print their white papers and distribute at trade shows. Beyond those actions, few companies do much else.

The question is: If you’re going to allocate marketing budget to promotion, why focus on white papers vs. media spends or company ads, etc. The reason is that each white paper campaign is highly focused on an ideal audience and thus provides you rifle-shot marketing accuracy. The leads generated from a well-implemented campaign will be on target and likely accelerate your typical sales cycle. Focusing budget on company ads results in a shot gun approach that’s much more hit-or-miss.

So without further ado, here’s our Top 12 Ways to Leverage a White Paper:

1. ID industry newsletters that target your ideal customers. These are usually available through existing media such as trade journals that often publish multiple newsletters targeting discrete segments of their readership. Sponsoring these newsletters is often very low cost as vs. a full-page ad in the parent publication. By doing a text-only ad that matches the font and spacing of the newsletter, you will achieve high responses and an excellent ROI. Some newsletters provide you with both a banner and a text ad. According to a recent newsletter advertiser, the text ad pulls far more leads than the banner ad!

2. Do a keyword and SEO optimized press release for the White Paper. Editors of many pubs often will publish an announcement of a new white paper. Be sure to include a .jpg image of the white paper including a caption and link to your website in the caption. Important: Be sure to copy the publisher and especially the publisher's rep. They do have sway with the editor and you will usually find reps a little more receptive than the editors. Ditto on all materials sent to editors, copy the reps and/or publishers.

3. A few weeks to a month or so after initial release of the paper, re-date and edit the title in a minor way and post on my Top Ten free PR sites - see attached article/blog post.

4. Check and see if one or more of your trade pubs have a White Paper section on their website where you can upload the White Paper at n/c. Some tech pubs do! Upload accordingly.

5. Post on one or more syndication sites, which unfortunately often prove to be very expensive.

6. Generate a "micro site" with carefully researched site URLs that will benefit your URL, eg., www.product-benefit.com You will still use your same company branding, but each white paper will have a unique, dedicated site. It will contain a specific amount of text for optimized SEO extracted from the WP, then a download button to a standard sign-in page with limited info: Name, Co, Email, phone to reduce user "friction." This will also give you great insight into monitoring results from two perspectives:

a) actual leads, which you can hopefully track through your internal CRM, thereby generating an ROI and

b) review the webmaster's log to see the sources of your hits to the site. This is very crucial to ID heavy traffic from one domain, e.g., Fujitsu which may have an engineer who downloaded your paper and circulated it within the company and multiple team members are clicking to the site, indicating a high-level sales alert to your team. It's also crucial to review sources of traffic from search engines that will also provide you with the key word(s) or phrase(s) used by the searcher. This resource is also highly informative to ID the most important keywords.

7. Google Adwords, a modest pay-per-click (PPC) campaign. Although Google denies it, my design partner and I have both independently confirmed with client campaigns that a Google Adwords campaign really boosts your SEO. Many search engine folks have also confirmed this to us. So instead of attempting to market your company via Adwords, focus on the white paper. It's easy to develop one or more compelling value propositions to test and Adwords has an extremely easy A/B ad testing tool to see which one is drawing the most clicks. Because the URL will be a generic title, such as www.product-benefit.com, you gain an extra marketing boost to support the reader’s urge to click. This campaign need not be expensive and can be adjusted according to response.

8. As we've already done with multiple papers, be sure to follow up with editors to leverage any of the content into articles.

9. Although many technology companies have not engaged in Social Media to date, I'm hearing more and more about companies who are. So the easy thing to do is post an announcement on your company Facebook page.

10. You can also engage on Twitter and/or other social media. There are automated tweet tools that will allow you to program a repeating tweet every xxx # of minutes or hours.

11. Convert the WP to a PPT presentation and post on one of the PPT posting sites. You can even go so far as to then modify your prior press release as a new press release about the availability of the PPT, gaining you more visibility.

12. In the PPT menu, one can convert the PPT to a video file. We can add a voice over and post on our list of 20 video sites. Again, post a new press release announcing the availability of the video.

Click to view writing samples and feel free to email or call for your custom lead generation program.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

The object of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to boost the position of your website in Google or other search engine results. Ideally, a well executed SEO campaign results in your website ranking at the top in the #1 position of search results whenever anyone enters one of the keywords or phrases for your site in a Google search engine.

Let’s take a brief look at why your page rank is important. We all intuitively know that if your website shows up in the #1 position for a keyword search on Google (or other search engine), that it’s much more likely that the searcher will click your site first. In 2006, AOL leaked millions of search records to the public. After scouring the results, based on 9,038,794 searches and 4,926,623 clicks, the chart below[i] shows the click distribution based on where sites ranked in Google.

The conclusion is that 62% of the clicks traffic occurred from the first three results in a Google search. 90% occurred on the first page and only 10% of clicks resulted from Page 2 results (Results 11-20). In addition to the obvious statistical distribution above, if you are perceived to be in the top position, any searcher automatically assumes you’re an industry leader.

A proper campaign leverages what is known about Google’s ranking algorithms which are based primarily on the number and authority of backlinks,[ii] meaning links on other sites to your site.

A useful tool, not widely publicized in Google, is the backlinks function. You can quickly see both the number and the actual backlinks for any site by entering: backlinks:www.nameofanysite.com in a Google search. Be sure that your search does NOT have quotation marks around it. For any site you enter, the results from this search will list the number of backlinks at the top of the page and then, just like a regular Google search, all of the individual sites linking back to the site you entered. Particularly if you're interested in monitoring your competitive environment on a long-term basis, you can take 5-10 minutes to quickly chart the number of backlinks on your competitors site each month. This will quickly inform you of any competitive initiatives, for example, and what if any activity your competitors are devoting to their online marketing effort.You can also click through and see when the backlink was established and determine how current your site's (or a competitor's) backlinks are.

You can also go to www.Alexa.com, enter the website of interest, and determine a number of useful metrics including a "Sites Linking In" which will likely be less than the Google "backlink:" tool described above. Reason appears to be that the "backlink:" search results report internal links between different sites for the same company, but that's my best guess. Alexa provides more useful competitive data.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

In Aug. of this year, Marketing Sherpa conducted their annual B2B Marketing Benchmark Survey of 935 marketing executives. Of the seven marketing issues reported, 78% of the respondents cited, “Generating High Quality Leads” as their #1 marketing challenge. Note also that this is up from the 2009 figure of 69%.

While over 3/4th's of respondents selected "Generating High Quality Leads", every other challenge was reported by less than 50% of those surveyed.

So the question is: How to Generate High Quality Leads in a challenging economy and on a limited budget?

The answer: Use a white paper lead generation program. Most technology sales, whether in the healthcare, electronics, semiconductor, or security industries work to long sales cycles. By necessity, most of these sales involve consensus building, identifying an evangelist at the prospect, and converting the various stakeholders to your solution. White papers provide just the right marketing tool. If well written, your prospects and evangelists will circulate them as a way to get the word out within their company about your exciting solution.

Using a modest, guerilla marketing-style campaign, you can then leverage each white paper's content in multiple ways. Most marketers do at least the most obvious things: Send to their sales team, post on their website, and email their customers and prospects. But what about turning the white paper into the promotional star? This approach gives your promo a really sharp focus. Take these additional steps:

1. Make sure the White Paper is optimized for your key words.

2. Create an optimized landing page just for the white paper. This gives you an easy way to monitor results and garner statistical feedback.

3. Press Release #1: Send a press release about your white paper to your industry media lists. Be sure to include a .jpg image of the front cover. They will often publish it in a "What's New" section.

4. Convert the White Paper to a Power Point, again optimized for key words. Post on the many PPT sites and include the PPT as a bonus download on your landing page.

5. Convert the Power Point to a video. Many people don't realize that there's a button in the PPT FILE MENU called "Save as Movie." This converts your PPT to video. You can then add voiceover with a variety of easy-to-use programs and post on YouTube and the many other video sites. How you post is important. Be sure to include the WP URL in the posting info as a link to improve results.

6. After conducting your SEO research, conduct a low-budget PPC Google Adwords campaign. In general, it's good to limit the number of your keywords. However, if you operate in a highly competitive Adwords category, research your long tail keywords. Easiest way: Check your weblog to see what search terms site visitors enter to reach your website. Although Google denies it, I've confirmed in multiple campaigns that a Google Adwords campaign, even as modest as $100/mo., is a key factor in boosting your site's SEO.

7. Look into syndication sites for your industry. Research carefully and make sure you understand costs and reporting.

8. And last, PR #2. 4-6 weeks after you've sent PR#1, recheck your release and possibly rewrite the title based on any knowledge you've gained during the campaign to date. Make the date current and then file it on the "free" press release sites. I've compiled a list that results in postings on well over 60 sites. I say "well over" because after you've posted, you'll receive multiple emails asking for confirmation to post on additional sites.

The reason this is an important step: One of the key factors in SEO is back links, meaning that the Google search spiders look for sites that have links to your site. The more you have, the more their ranking algorithm likes it. In addition to providing a boost to your SEO (where your site appears in organic search listings), you may well be pleasantly surprised to find your "free" press release postings appearing in the top 10 of your keyword search results.

A recent posting for a client totally surprised me. Out of curiosity a couple of days after posting the news release, I was astonished to find that when I entered one of the key word phrases, the release appeared in position #3! And three other "free" site postings made it into the top 10 as well. Blew me away and my client reporting increased volume on his website.

By the way, I put the word "free" in quotes for a reason: Although technically free, many of the sites I use have upgrades available. Having posted many releases on these sites, I've learned which upgrades are worth it and which aren't. Be careful. Some have VERY expensive upgrades. However, the total cost for all posting sites is under $200 for posting fees using our recommended upgrades.

Budget Guidelines & Model Budgets

To help you in your 2011 budget planning, I've posted an Excel file on my website with three different White Paper programs based on the above program: Getting into Orbit (3 White Papers in 2011), Shooting for the Moon (6 White Papers in 2011), and Heading for the Stars (8 White Papers in 2011). Download the file at: http://bit.ly/cDinWH

Thursday, October 14, 2010

I recently signed up for a webinar with the above title and found it very inspiring. I've downloaded the accompanying ebook, also worth it's weight in gold. Click here to download the eBook. The webinar was recorded and is available by clicking here. (You will only have to enter just your email on the gotomeeting.com landing page.)

Feel free to download and also share any inspiring thoughts you might have about it for your healthcare, semiconductor, security software, or other technology products or services.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

OK, now you've completed your white paper and done the first routine things most companies do -- send it to your sales team, post it on your website, and maybe email it to your prospect list.

All of those are important to do. However, if that's all you do, you might be missing the boat. Get a much bigger bang (and better ROI) by turning your white paper into a potent high quality, cost-effective lead generation tool. As a lead gen tool, you can promote the paper in at least these eight low-to-no cost ways:

Leveraging content into an article for an industry publication (electronic or print)

Getting a press release out to industry media -- many industry pubs publish a "What's New" or "New Whitepapers" section

Secondary release of the paper to low cost "free" press release distribution -- results in 60 or more backlinks to your site and improves SEO. Depending on the particular key words or phrases, one of these releases may even hit the top 10 in organic search results.

Convert the white paper to a catchy PowerPoint presentation and post on the multiple presentation sharing sites

Convert the PPT to a video and add voice over. Post on over 20 video sites (all of which help your SEO -- where your company appears in organic search results)

Create an optimized custom landing page for the white paper so you can monitor results, leads generated, etc.

Post a note about the paper on your social media links, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

Once you've launched your campaign, make sure you've got a process in place to track your leads, respond, qualify them, weed out the "time wasters" and forward to your sales team. Be sure to monitor and track the responses on the paper's download page and readership on any syndicated sites where you've posted the paper.

It's my experience that the more time spent in the planning and research cycle, the stronger the paper.

White Paper:

1. Preliminary: Paper objective. A white paper "leads the reader's mind" to a positive conclusion about solving their problem and thus, using your product and/or service. So put yourself in your reader's position and then ask yourself this question (which every reader is going to ask one way or another): What's in it for me? Some of the questions that will help you arrive at producing a strong positive response in your reader are:

-- What's the end result we're aiming for?

-- Who's the audience?

-- Why is the topic of importance and the connection to your product and/or service (if not immediately self-evident)?

-- Industry research: What the analysts (Gartners, Forresters, etc.) of the world are saying, recent and/or hot topics in the field, recent related trade articles, etc.

-- Contact information for any appropriate outside resources for the paper such as:

-- Website logs -- to find out the search terms people use to access your site

-- Customers and/or Channel partners

3. Interview the Key Resource people for the White Paper

4. Detailed Outline: This is a crucial step that will make it very simple and easy when writing the final draft.

-- All stakeholders must review the detailed outline. The purpose of this step is to present the proposed title, the first draft of the introduction, about 3-4 paragraphs, and a detailed outline of the body content. This step usually requires at least two iterations, occasionally three. The first draft of the outline often triggers responses such as "Oh we forgot to include this." Other changes and corrections may include upgrading the writer's understanding of the subject matter, correct technical phrases for the field (though we usually research this extensively), and other deletions or corrections.

-- This establishes alignment on the project and makes final approval very easy with only minor edits needed.

-- Sign-off on detailed outline

-- It's critical for all stakeholders to actually review and sign off on the detailed outline. Otherwise, it's too easy to "wave a hand" and say, "Oh, it's fine," and then have a senior manager find serious issues when reviewing the draft. Fortunately, this scenario is 100% preventable by the outline review.

5. Draft:

-- We usually write the paper within a few days after the outline is approved.

-- Review by all relevant parties.

-- Normally, if all parties signed off on the outline, only minor tweaks for the first draft.

My goal as your writer is to make the process for you and your busy business associates as easy as possible: